08-14-2008, 04:26 AM
wkoenigsmann Wrote:It is also disturbing, and asymptomatic of the malady of our modern age: lack of beauty. Unlike Poe's writing, which was beautiful, there is really no beauty in any of the modern Gothic of today.
So true and so regrettable. Even in relatively recent authors like V. Holt and M. Stewart, there is also beauty -- and intelligence. There are references to classical mythology, to art, to music; there is a sense of history, and the suggestion that the authors were educated in these subjects. Witness On the Night of the Seventh Moon, set in romantic Bavaria and full of allusions to Teutonic folklore, most of which would be completely lost (and hence wasted) on the average reader of popular fiction today. Why is that?
